UT
Arlington Art Professor Mary Vaccaro has been appointed to serve as the 2014-2015 Lila
Wallace-Reader’s Digest Visiting Professor in Art History at Villa I Tatti-The
Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies outside Florence, Italy.
She begins her residence in spring 2015.

Mary Vaccaro, art professor in the UT Arlington College of Liberal Arts.

Vaccaro
is an authority on Italian Renaissance art, especially 16th century
northern Italian painting and drawing. She returns to Villa I Tatti, having
earned one of 15 annual post-doctoral fellowships at the institute early in her
career.

“I
am most honored to be returning to the remarkable institution that helped to
cultivate my passion and understanding as an art historian, especially the
skills in connoisseurship for which Bernard Berenson (who bequeathed Villa I
Tatti to Harvard) was renowned,” said Vaccaro, a distinguished scholar in the
UT Arlington College of Liberal Arts.

“I
look forward with great enthusiasm to continuing my research on old Master
drawings and to engaging more broadly with the vibrant I Tatti community of
scholars on all facets of Renaissance studies,” she said.

Beth
Wright, dean of the UT Arlington College of Liberal Arts, said the Villa I
Tatti appointment places Vaccaro in the most respected circles for art research
and academic excellence.

“Dr.
Vaccaro’s well-deserved international reputation as a leading scholar in
Italian Renaissance studies is evident not only in such prestigious research
awards as this one, but in the solicitation of her expertise by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Royal Museums of Belgium,” Wright said. “Dr.
Vaccaro’s work will benefit our international and American colleagues and
students and elevate our research reputation around the globe.”

Vaccaro
is one of only five Americans to be recognized in the visiting professor
category. A total of 35 appointees have been selected for the next academic
year. They represent all four major areas of research at I Tatti – art history,
history, literature and musicology – and come from 13 different countries.

Although
part of Harvard, I Tatti is not within any other division of the university and
functions as an independent, allied institution. The program is viewed as one
of the foremost institutions for advanced research in the humanities in the
world.

Vaccaro joined UT Arlington in
1994. She was a 2013 recipient of the UT Arlington Academy of Distinguished
Scholars. She received the Texas Fund for Curatorial Research grant in 2012 and
2011 for travel abroad when she examined Italian pre-1600 drawings in French
regional collections.

About UT Arlington

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University of Texas at Arlington is a comprehensive research institution and
the second largest institution in The University of Texas System. The
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fastest-growing public research university in 2013. U.S. News & World Report
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